 | |||||
| Oooooh, what am I gonna do?! |
- That our query alone among hundreds is the one that the email system has somehow mysteriously failed to deliver and it is now lost to the ether forever
- To email or not to email that agent who was supposed to receive the perhaps-vanished-forever query
- To email or not email an agent who’s a day late in his or her estimated response times
- That some readers might mistakenly pronounce a word we MADE UP
- The fact that, technically speaking, the title of this post should be Silly Things Over Which Writers Panic
- Amazon rankings. Did anyone buy our book in the last hour…minute…second?!?! WHY NOT? REFRESH!!
- Reviews…any, all, number, substance, you name it
- That we've run out of a) chocolate, b) coffee, c) tea, d) [fill in the blank!]
- Did that last edit save? Let’s save again, to be sure. Oh my gosh, we might lose EVERYTHING!! We did save it, didn’t we? Okay, just once more.
- That another book (movie, TV show, one-woman play) in a totally different genre (format, universe) used the SAME NAME as our character’s cat (horse, best friend). Clearly, it must be changed THIS INSTANT!
- What if someone misinterprets our meaning in line 3 of the fourth paragraph on page 315?! (Seriously, these are the ones that keep me up at night!)
- Any combination of: We’ll be perceived as writing on trend. We ARE writing on trend. We missed the trend!
- That people will call our work dreck.
- That people won’t say that last one out loud, but they’ll be thinking it.
- That no one, anywhere, will ever want to read our words.
STOP. Scroll back up to the title of this post. Read it.
Now quit being silly and get back to writing, because I want to see ALL your stories some day!
© Editorial | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Oh Nicole...
ReplyDeleteThat list is so true!
(Except for the P.315 bits, 'cos my ms is only 274 pages long...)
But now I'm panicking... is the ms too short... what can I do to fill out another 41 pages !!!
Have a good, non-panicking week :)
LOL! This list is perfect!
ReplyDeleteAs a non author, I think this is funny.
ReplyDeleteI chuckled all the way through that list! Yes, I know readers are mispronouncing at least one word I made up. And it bugs me...
ReplyDeleteI laughed at the end, when you had me scroll back to the title! Too true, there are so many crazy things we worry over! I especially loved the lack of chocolate one, lol. :D
ReplyDeleteMy big one is that if my parents ever read my books (not likely, even when they're published), they'll view all the negative relationships in them as being drawn from our relationship.
ReplyDeleteLOL! This seriously made me smile! Oh, so perfect! We do worry over the weirdest things. I've done that with my blog title so many time, it's ridiculous! LOL!
ReplyDeleteMark - Haha, like Goldilocks, I'm sure your story length is "just right."
ReplyDeleteKyra - Thanks!
Jo - I'm so glad.
Alex - Now I want to know what the word is, AND how to pronounce it correctly. :)
Cortney - So glad you enjoyed it!
Laura - Uh oh!
Leigh - Me too, with the blog title thing. It IS ridiculous, but it seems to come with the territory as a writer. ;)
oh the trend thing is really making me silly right now, even though I don't write to trends, I just happened to fall into the current YA SF trend which is over peak now. stressing way too much over this
ReplyDeleteBut it's true! All those agents must have lost my e-mail. Why else have they responded to everyone else but not me!!! Really, it drives me mad to check the stats on QueryTracker and see that others have gotten a response when I'm still waiting. I think I'm sitting in a bunch of "maybe" piles. It's turning me into a crazy woman. :P
ReplyDeleteI could relate to every single thing on this list! my favorite was "Any combination of: We’ll be perceived as writing on trend. We ARE writing on trend. We missed the trend!" but I also stress over something in my writing getting misunderstood. You just can't predict how some people will receive things; certain things may be negative triggers to them; it's easy to judge an entire work by one thing that strikes someone in a wrong or misunderstood way.
ReplyDelete